American Medical Biographies/Pilcher, James Evelyn
Pilcher, James Evelyn (1857–1911)
James Evelyn Pilcher, military surgeon, editor, author, teacher, was born in Adrian, Michigan, on March 18, 1857; son of Elijah Holmes and Phebe Maria Fiske Pilcher. He graduated A. B. from the University of Michigan in 1879, and at once took up the further study of medicine under the direction of his brother, Dr. Lewis Stephen Pilcher, in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated M. D. from the Long Island College Hospital in 1880. He received the degrees of A. M. and Ph. D. from the Illinois Wesleyan University in 1887 and L. H. D. from Allegheny College in 1902. He was commissioned as an assistant surgeon in the United States Army in 1883 and became major and brigade surgeon, U. S. V., in 1898. He was retired on account of ill health in 1900. He died April 8, 1911, at Savannah, Georgia, from the effects of a diabetic carbuncle of the face. For a number of years he had been the subject of gradual failure of vision, consequent upon the retinal hemorrhages of chronic diabetes, and for the two years previous to his death had been nearly totally blind.
From boyhood Dr. Pilcher was interested in typographical and journalistic work, and throughout his life continued to display his interest in that branch of effort, and to give to his colleagues the benefit of his unusual abilities in that direction.
In the very beginning of his medical career he was an important factor in the establishment of the Annals of Anatomy and Surgery, the publication of which ceased upon his appointment as a military officer in the Army. It was due to the work of that journal that in the following year the Annals of Surgery was instituted under the direction of his brother, Dr. Lewis S. Pilcher. As secretary of the Military Surgeons of the United States he organized and carried on, as a monthly publication from 1901 to 1906, the Journal of the Association of Military Surgeons, which in 1907 became the Military Surgeon, of which he continued to be editor until he was compelled by his increasing blindness to give up all such work in 1909.
During his early army career he was transferred from army post to army post in the usual manner. In 1890 he was on duty at Fort Ringgold, Texas, near the Mexican Border. During his term of service there an epidemic of Dengue fever, of a severe type, spread throughout all that region, and he was the only physician within a radius of 100 miles. The entire responsibility and labor of giving medical advice throughout this whole region, both to the members of his garrison and the civilians, fell upon him. To this work he devoted himself most assiduously. Near the close of the epidemic he himself suffered from the disease, and those that were with him at the time relate with admiration the manner in which, while sick, he had himself carried to his carriage and made long journeys to give advice to those who were dependent upon him, returning in a state of utter exhaustion to his own quarters. From the effects of this labor and disease-attack he never fully recovered. From that time began the train of digestive disturbances which culminated in the frankly expressed diabetes which ultimately cut short his career. He summoned all his energies together, however, for the performance of the duties attending his work as a brigade surgeon of volunteers during the Spanish American War, during which in connection with the seventh Army Corps he was in command of the army medical supply depot at Savannah, Georgia. He threw himself with his customary ardor into the duties of his position, notwithstanding his poor health, but when the special demand for his services ceased, by reason of the close of the war, he collapsed and it became manifest that he never could again assume the burdens of the active list.
He was married in 1883 to Mina Adela Parker of Brooklyn, who survived him.
Doctor James Evelyn Pilcher had in a high degree an unusual combination of abilities; he had fine executive talents added to great industry and an active interest in many fields of activity. In the earlier years of his military service he was the author of the first system of drill for the United States Army Hospital Corps published in the United States, which was crowned as highly meritorious by the War Department. During this period, also, he compiled his work on "First Aid in Illness and Injury," the first edition of which, published by the Scribners, was issued in 1892. It has since gone through many editions, and has maintained its position as the principal text-book for the instruction of the Hospital Corps up to the present time.
To relieve the monotony of a winter's duties at Fort Custer, Montana, he devoted himself to the translation into English of the famous book of Mundinus, "de Anathomia Humani Corporis Interioribus Membris," which remains in manuscript as a monument to his patience and classical knowledge.
During the term of his service at the army post of Columbus, Ohio, he filled the chairs of military surgery in three of the medical schools of that city, and after his retirement filled the chairs of sociology and political economy in Dickinson College, and that of professor of medical jurisprudence in the Dickinson School of Law at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he made his home during the later years of his life.
He perhaps became most widely known through his activity in the work of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States of which he became the secretary in 1897, remaining in that position until his increasing blindness necessitated retirement therefrom two years before his death.
He contributed many articles both to the medical and general press. By his versatility and breadth of mental horizon he took an interest in many things and enjoyed the friendship of many men. Upon the reorganization of the National Volunteer Emergency Relief Corps he was made director general of the corps, but his failing health prevented him from giving to the work the measure of attention which he had hoped to be able to give.